"She never gave me that impression, anyhow," said the young man.
"It was neither her duty to give nor yours to receive that impression," said Mr. Pope.
Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss.
"Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy words?" asked Mr. Pope, drumming with ten fingers on the table.
Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets and assumed a fictitious pose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite so provocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.
"Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began, "but why can't I fall in love with your daughter? I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort of thing. I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell in his science. I'm an entirely decent and respectable person."
"I beg to differ," said Mr. Pope.
"But I am."
"Again," said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and a slight forward bowing of the head, "I beg to differ."
"Well—differ. But all the same——"